Online research in philosophy

This paper challenges the idea that there is a natural opposition between self-interest and morality. It does by developing an account of self-love according to which we can have self-regarding reasons that (1) differ substantially from the standard conception of self-interest and that (2) share enough crucial features with moral reasons to count as morally respectable.The argument involves three steps. The first step concentrates on the idea of a moral point of view as a means to distinguish between reasons (...) that could be morally respectable and those we have reason to distrust as not morally respectable. The second step discusses Harry Frankfurt's work on love, in order to develop an attitude of selfless love as a source of morally respectable reasons. The third step introduces the idea of an alternative of oneself to show that selfless self-love is a coherent conception of an attitude that provides one with self-regarding and self-grounded reasons that are also morally respectable. (shrink)

Philip Pettit's ethocentric account of rule-following is elaborated and defended in this paper as basically a story about the capacity to reason organized around largely implicit assumptions about what is and what is not normal. It is argued that this account can be insightfully used to elucidate the practical reasoning of agents confronted with the normative indeterminacy that seems to be characteristic of radically new situations. It is shown that practical reasoning consists to a large extent in the capacity to (...) articulate, specify, and evaluate implicit assumptions about what is and what is not normal. One corollary of this account of practical reason is investigated in some detail: the predominant role of intrapersonal divergence of habits in reasoning about an apparent normative indeterminacy and the related, merely criteriological role of convergence with respect to determining the right rules to follow. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are practical problems of such a kind that neither impartial morality nor rational choice theory can provide us with comfort and guidance in our attempt to make the right choice if confronted with such a problem. It argues that both morality and rational choice theory are bound to misconstrue problems of this kind. Appreciating the limits of both morality and rational choice theory, as currently discussed in the literature (Wolf, Morton, Pettit, Hollis & Sugden), enables (...) us to identify the features of these particular practical problems, and allows us to elaborate the idea of an alternative of oneself, which is crucial to a proper understanding of the kind of practical problem the paper draws attention to. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are practical problems of such a kind that neither impartial morality nor rational choice theory can provide us with comfort and guidance in our attempt to make the right choice if confronted with such a problem. It argues that both morality and rational choice theory are bound to misconstrue problems of this kind. Appreciating the limits of both morality and rational choice theory, as currently discussed in the literature (Wolf, Morton, Pettit, Hollis & Sugden), enables (...) us to identify the features of these particular practical problems, and allows us to elaborate the idea of an alternative of oneself, which is crucial to a proper understanding of the kind of practical problem the paper draws attention to. (shrink)

The paper addresses the problem of authenticity from a point of view that diverges from the more usual social, political, or moral approaches, by focusing very explicitly on the internal psychological make-up of human agents in an attempt to identify the conditions that would enable us to use the colloquial phrase 'being true to ourselves' in a way that is philosophically tenable. First, it is argued that the most important and problematic condition is the requirement that agents can be the (...) source of normative constraints which they themselves should attempt to respect. In the main part of the paper an argument is developed against a more or less Humean interpretation of this crucial requirement, according to which agents can be the source of normative constraints because they have desires , and a more or less Kantian interpretation, according to which agents can be the source of normative constraints because they have the capacity to judge . The Humean account is unsatisfactory, because it fails to make sense of the normativity of the content of desires, and because it cannot account on its own for what makes a person's desires her own . The Kantian account is also unsatisfactory, because, although it can account for the difference between being true to someone else and being true to certain principles, it is unable to account for the difference between being true to oneself and being true to principles. In the final part I shall suggest a way out of this impasse by claiming that the intelligibility of the phenomenon of being true to oneself crucially depends on the, yet to be explored, possibility of developing an account of self-respect that involves both de se attitudes and the idea of ourselves being valuable entities. (shrink)